Sir Ian McGeechan: My plan to save rugby union in the north of England

Sir Ian McGeechan outlines his plan to build a sustainable business and
sporting template for northern clubs such as Leeds Carnegie, Sale and
Newcastle

Plenty of room: Glyn Hughes converts a try for Leeds Carnegie at a sparsely populated Headingly earlier this year. Remaining financially sustainable while only attracting small crowds is important for all of the northern rugby union sides.Photo: PINNACLE

How do we solve the northern problem? How do we keep northern rugby fighting at a good level in the Premiership table?

Yes, on the field this season Sale have shown a marked improvement and huge credit to Steve Diamond, the director of rugby, and Bryan Redpath, the head coach, for what has been done there. But that does not mean they do not have problems.

My biggest concern since returning to northern rugby as the chairman of Leeds Carnegie is how reliant the professional game is on a group of individual backers.

If, say, eight people suddenly decided that they had had enough of the game, then the whole Premiership landscape would change dramatically. And even with those backers, there have been pretty scary losses that run into millions that have been recently reported from clubs like Saracens and Bath. That is just not sustainable, without the goodwill and generosity of the owners. What worries me is the bar for player salaries has been set artificially high because of the individual investor commitment.

At Leeds we are aiming to change the name to Yorkshire Carnegie. We think we can provide something in the county that really is sustainable. It is a strong rugby county, and the aim is to get the best set-up possible so that we can have long-term Premiership rugby.

Having a Yorkshire name is one way of trying to create an enduring identity and tradition behind a professional template. Our hope is that many of the significant Yorkshire-based businesses will get behind that when they might not have done so before if it was a totally Leeds-centric organisation.

We have a couple of key meetings taking place over the next two weeks and so hopefully we can make a final announcement on the name soon. We have the absolute backing of England head coach Stuart Lancaster on the project while, in pure rugby terms, we have the possibility of something very special and powerful to develop the game at all levels in a truly integrated way.

There is huge potential in the county. The Leeds academy is one of the strongest in the country: in the last 12 months it has been reviewed and compares with the best of the Premiership clubs.

There are 120-odd clubs in Yorkshire with some excellent schools. Recently we have gone from looking at 50 players in an age group to 250. And that is in the space of 12 months.

There is a natural rugby union support in Yorkshire. They once got 13,000 at Headingley for a Jonny Wilkinson visit, so that base is there, even if it was not often shown when Leeds were in the Premiership.

I will give you a statistic. Of all the rugby union players born in England who have gone on to represent the country, one in seven has been born in Yorkshire. Even if you take all England players, including those born outside England, that statistic only comes down to one in 11. In the current England team you have Danny Care who was born in Leeds and Luther Burrell who was born in Huddersfield.

The England coaching set-up has a very northern influence too, with the presence of Lancaster, Andy Farrell and Graham Rowntree. It just shows what a hotbed of rugby the North is.

What disappoints me most is that some Premiership clubs see what a good job is being done in Yorkshire to develop and then come to raid the system, something in principle they are not supposed to do. They should be producing their own players, in their own areas.

I was lucky. I came through with the future England centre John Spencer. He went to Sedbergh School, Yorkshire Schools, Cambridge University and into the Headingley club.

By contrast, I went to West Park School and was told by my teacher Ken Dalby to go try my luck at Headingley. Eight of us from the school went and joined the Colts. Within 12 months I was in the first team, playing for them on a Saturday afternoon, having played for the school in the morning.

John and I have remained good friends, but we came from very different backgrounds. What it does show is that you can come through in different ways.

And what is most important is that you have good people giving sound advice at key points in your progress. If you have a system like that you hope the young boys will want to play for Yorkshire.

That is what I wanted and my hope is that if there is any kid in Yorkshire who has the talent to play for England, the programmes and the structures should be good enough to find him, develop him, and then put an England jersey on his back. That is my philosophy.

As you may have gathered, I am very excited by the whole project, but that is not to say it will not be tough, as Sale and Newcastle can no doubt testify.

If you have not lived in the North and been around the rugby union game here, it is easy to dismiss the obstacles that stand in our way – not least the impact of having a third sport after football and rugby union as a competitor for support.

Rugby league is a challenger for business support and crowds. We have got a joint operation with Leeds Rhinos, and it is great to be part of that set-up because it is probably the best in rugby league. They are the Manchester United of that sport. But there is still no escaping the fact that union and league are two different games and there are two different support groups. They generally do not overlap. Sale will know all about that, too.

At Newcastle it is merely a football problem. That area used to have two rugby union clubs in the old days, Northern and Gosforth, that were very strong, and huge rivals. But Newcastle United is just so big there that it is difficult to compete.

And let us not forget that Newcastle did win the Premiership in 1998, after they had stolen a bit of a march with Sir John Hall’s money and the advent of professionalism. But it showed what the money of a private backer can do, and also in the same stroke that it does not last forever.

I see that Sale have now decided to move their home fixtures from Friday nights to Saturday afternoons from next season. It is a good idea, especially in travelling terms on a Friday night. But one of the problems is that even if you are getting crowds of about 10,000 it is difficult to operate business-wise.

The likes of Sale and Newcastle get nowhere near that. The highest Sale have got at their AJ Bell Stadium this season is 6,876, and at Newcastle’s Kingston Park it is 7,073. Even Wasps have only attracted 7,040 as their highest crowd this season.

When you are only getting that sort of support, the salary budget should probably be about £2 million in total. The salaries have now well exceeded that, with the cap of £4.7 million going up again next season. Those costs are simply not in the natural income.

Northampton have become one of the best professional clubs in how they operate. They have made a profit for the last 13 years. They are extending their ground, and ultimately want a capacity of 17,000. Leicester’s ground can hold 24,000, Gloucester’s can also hold 16,000.

These are some of the best templates. They will have conferences and the like throughout the week, as well as the rugby business. It helps having your own grounds as they do, to allow a 24/7 business to evolve. But they are showing the way. I am hoping that I can find a way at Leeds, and throughout Yorkshire, to make our region and our game thrive through every level with our own special template.